My Personal Page
 

My Family and Me

As mentioned before, my name is Francois.  I live in Pretoria, South Africa with my wife Michelle and our little girl, Kaitlyn.

I work as a computer programmer, developing applications and databases using C/C++.  I am a technology nut, and make sure I keep up to date with the latest in the computer and technology world.  When I am not developing software at work, I can be found either working on one of my 3 computers at home, plaing with my model trains, or running/walking/driving after trains somewhere in South Africa.

My wife works as a banking clark for a small bank.  She likes to watch movies.  She must have had a glass maker in her family, since she sometimes even watches movies with her eyes closed, but she somehow manages to follow the story!!!  She also like to plant stuff in the garden, and Kaitlyn likes to assist her mother in this task.  She still has a problem understanding where to dig a hole, but I suppose she is still a little young, and she will improve!

My Photographic Equipment

I am not a profesional photographer.  What I have learned came the hard way (and sometimes expensive).  I started with a really cheap Yashica 35mm, fixed focus camera.  This camera obviously had a very short useful life.  In 1999 I purchased a Pentax Espio 738.  It is also a 35mm camera, with a built in flash and a 28-78mm zoom lens.  Again, no professional camera, but a huge improvement over the Yashica!  All the photos on my web site taken with a film camera, was taken using the Pentax.  I used a variety of film, from both Kodac and Fuji film.  I also sometimes used normal negatives (Kodac ProPhoto 100, Fuji Superia 100, 200, 400), and when money allowed it, I used slide film (Fuji Sensia 100, 200).  The camera was still a fairly basic compact zoom camera, with a very limit zoom, and virtually no exposure comtrols of any sort (except for the ability to use a sort of extended exposre for low light shots).

This camera served me well until I fell off my rocker, and bought a Fuji FinePix S602 Zoom digital camera. It is a fairly high end consumer camera, with full manual and automatic modes.  It has a built in 6x optical zoom lens (28-210mm 35mm equivalent) with an adapter ring to take add-on telephoto and makro lenses.  The camera has a very impressive macro mode, with the ability to focus from 10mm to 200mm in super macro, and from 100mm to 600mm in normal macro!  This comes in VERY handy when I try to take pictures of models (especially my N scale stuff.

Which brings me to my models

I belong to a HO modular club, where I run my HO South African, American, and British (GWR) outline trains.  My biggest interes is admittedly South African trains, but the rediculous prices these models demand, makes it difficult for me.  I have at good variety of SAR/Spoornet models, which you can take a look at here.  In contrast, I have a fairly large collection of American models, and a small number of GWR models in OO (4mm:foot).  I also have a small N scale layout at home (no space for anything more) abouth the size of a standard door.  I have a number of Bachman, Atlas, and Arnold wagons.  My wagons are mostly models of goods cars, but I do have a 8 coach long North Coast Limited.  I own a Atlas EMD E8 (built by Roco), a Lima MDT switcher and an Arnold Rapido 'Baldwin Switcher', which I believe is a rare model. Apparently it was the first commercially available loco in N scale, dating back to 1963!

Well, thats it for this page.  Feel free to send comments to my guest book.